Posts Tagged ‘responsibility’

So states Linus’s Law. Coined by Eric Raymond in his book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar:” Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone. Or, less formally, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I dub this: “Linus’s Law”. My original formulation […]

Kansas University professor David Guth tweets: The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you. Stupid. The Kansas Board of Regents unanimously votes to revoke academic freedom and basic right to freedom of speech. Stupid2. This is a self-serving […]

In a previous post, Experts in a Time of Unreason, I made reference to a case involving six scientists and a government official convicted of manslaughter for the failure to predict the 2009 earthquake that killed more than 300 people and leveled the city of L’Aquila. A year later, one of the convicted scientists, Enzo […]

Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D-NY): In some forty years of government work I have learned one thing for certain. As I have put it, the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it […]

Barry Schwartz offers his view on why liberal arts colleges are important. “In my view, higher education should be equipping students to answer these four questions: What is worth knowing? What is worth doing? What makes for a good human life? What are my responsibilities to other people?” If this were happening, than the value […]

The Johari window is well known in teaching and learning circles and can be a useful way to illustrate various cognitive limitations in thinking. Most frequently, it is used to show what attributes you and other may know about you (see Figure 1.) An individual interested in personal growth would presumably work to shrink the […]

Writes Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post, If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the instant access […]

Previously, I wrote how the government’s poor response to hurricane Sandy is a manifestation of decades worth of mission creep: Micromanagement of the citizenry, on the other hand, is something that should unequivocally be outside the control or influence of governments, if for no other reason than it detracts from the organization’s ability to successfully […]

Sarah Hoyt has an interesting essay on her experience of becoming a United States citizen. This comment caught my eye: Part of the thing with Europe is the worship of the “experts.” “We’ll take it to the expert” or “We’ll have the expert do it.” Yet, when the experts get it wrong, even when the […]

There are many. The most valuable one for survivors and observers may be that governments, even when optimally structured and run, cannot mitigate the Big Acts of Nature. The optimal structure for a government would have its power and influence limited to addressing the big things that are a consequence of large numbers of people interacting […]